“When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now. Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine.” April is National Poetry Month according to an email that I received from my publisher. Now I have to admit that I am not a major poetry reader, though for my education I did have to read all of the classic literature and there was some poetry in the mix. One of the few poems that I could come up with in the labyrinth of memories was:
“A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune.”
Not exactly about wine in the Gold Rush Days of the North-West; the poem The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert W. Service. So I pondered about poetry, and then it dawned on me, that classic music when the lyrics are written are like poems, so I thought back to my youth and tried to remember some of them and offer a different type of article for your pleasure and some of the wines that were popular back then.

Of course the first couple of lines that I typed out were from The Beatles for those old enough to remember that group, and bear with me, because most of the lines will be from the ancient days, the days of my youth. Of course the next remembrance will make my Bride smile, because it was one the favorite songs of her late Father’s and her late Uncles called Elvira:
“Eyes that look like heaven, lips like sherry wine.”

In the old days of my youth, when we used to gather at the park and line up the cars with the windows open and the radios blaring, while we drank beer and even Boone’s Farm, and thankfully I do not have a label from those days, and I am not even sure if I would call that wine, but I digress, as I normally do, and I think of the song Bottle of Wine:
“Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine.
When you gonna let me get sober”
Leave me alone, let me go home.
Let me go home and start over.”
Or that other song that would get us a bit rowdy and loud Spill the Wine:
“I could feel hot flames of fire roaring at my back.
As she disappeared, but soon she returned.
In her hand was a bottle of wine, in the other a glass.
And raised it to her lips.
And just before the drank it she said
‘Spill the wine and take that pearl
Spill the wine and take that pearl
Spill the wine and take that pearl
Spill the wine and take that pearl’”

Champagne has been in songs for years and of course, my growing up with The Rat Pack for some guidance how could I neglect the great Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick out of you:
“I get no kick from champagne,
Mere alcohol doesn’t move me at all.
So tell me why should it be true?
That I get a kick out of you.”
While on the subject of Champagne, the “Frank Sinatra” of Hawaii, the theme song of Don Ho was Tiny Bubbles and I remember being on stage for a gag with him when I was in Las Vegas and I have the keepsake to prove it:
“Tiny bubbles (tiny bubbles)
In the wine (in the wine)
Make me happy (make me happy)
Make me feel fine (make me feel fine).”

Finally the old romantic in me, can’t leave this article (?) without mentioning another great crooner, who not only sang the title of this entry, but That’s Amore:
“When the moon hits your eye,
Like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.
When the world seems to shine,
Like you’ve had too much wine, that’s amore.”